Movie Night
by A Frumious Bandersnatch
Summary: Jake wished that they would stop watching these movies about aliens. It wasn’t doing anything to make him feel very good about their chances.


**A/N:** Still living.

True fact: In _Alien_ with the chestburster scene, the actors were not told all the details. They knew the alien would be coming out of the man's chest and they had seen the alien puppet, but they were not told about the fake blood that was going to be squirting up thanks to high-pressure pumps. So those looks of horror.. Yeah, those were real.

**Disclaimer:** _Avatar_ and all associated belong to James Cameron.

* * *

Movie Night

"How old is this movie?"

Though half the room was too caught up in the movie to care, the other half of the room still shushed him. Jake rolled his eyes. He hadn't spoken that loud and he felt that he had asked a perfectly valid question. This was a very old movie. The graphics were laughable.

"It was released in 1979." Norm told him in a whisper. "It's a classic. It's on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. And it was ranked as the seventh best film in the science-fiction genre."

"Okay..." Jake nodded, trying not to let on that he was impressed by this. This film industry was hard to succeed in; with everyone watching your every move. To have a movie be a stirring success even years after it had been released was monumental. "But why are we watching another movie about aliens?"

"_Shhhhhh!_" His nearest neighbors threw handfuls of popcorn at him.

Another valid question, Jake believed, but he seemed to be the only person who cared.

Every Friday night at Hell's Gate was Movie Night. Whoever thought this was a good idea might have been sniffing glue or cleaning fumes, as Movie Night was always a few steps shy of a disaster. It ended in popcorn fights and spilled beverages and a little drunken rowdiness from whoever had snuck the contraband in and no one ever saw the end of the movie. Every night, some higher-up swore that that was going to be the last Movie Night, yet on the next Friday, they were popping another film in for Hell's Gate to enjoy.

Nonetheless, the RDA believed that this was a very good way for those grounded on Pandora to stay connected with Earth. For all their glue-sniffing and cleaning fume-inhaling, Jake couldn't help but find this method to be a highly effective one. Most of the films came from the latter half of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century; back in the day when the notion of space-flight and aliens had really taken hold on the collective consciousness of humanity. More importantly, back before they had stupidly dumped pollutants into their atmosphere. Everyone marveled at how blue the sky was; at how bright green the grass was. Those images embolded the scientists and the researchers to get their unobtanium and restore the planet to its proper colors.

But there was a recurring theme to each movie. They were all about aliens.

Frankly, Jake was sick of these movies. Every single last fucking one of them had aliens. If the aliens weren't invading Earth, then they were trying to destroy it. If they weren't trying to destroy it, then they were out to enslave the human race and hold the very existence of Earth hostage so none of the humans would attempt a revolt. If they weren't trying that, then they were using the human race to perpetuate their own species or using the bloody planet as a battleground for their war. Or they were just messing with Planet Earth for shits and giggles, only to get blown out of the sky by angry humans and heavily armed nukes.

There was only one Disney movie in the entire collection. **One**. And it was _Lilo & Stitch_, but what did that have? Aliens. Of course. It was like the RDA was trying to hammer it into their heads that aliens were bad news, humans ruled the universe, and no extra-terrestrial oughta be messing around with the human race if they didn't want to get their butts whupped.

Sure, humans in general were tenacious little buggers when they wanted to be, but c'mon!

It was brainwashing. Subtle brainwashing. It had to be.

The bad part was, Jake had very little to pass the time. Dr. Augustine wasn't going to let him anywhere near his Avatar until he had clocked at least one hundred hours on the simulator. This was difficult, seeing as the other Avatar-drivers were more nervous than he was about finally being allowed to have a go with the real thing that they were hogging all the simulator stations to the point where they forgot to obey basic bodily functions. Needless to say, Jake wasn't too keen on strapping himself into a simulator after the previous person had had an accident. Movie Night was kind of the highlight of his week.

_Why can't they just lay off the aliens already?_ Jake wondered with an internal groan while one of the actors on screen really got into the choking and gagging routine and collapsed on the table. They were on a planet-sized moon with a mostly toxic atmosphere that was needed six years of hyper-sleep to reach and a fairly amiable relationship with most of the other aliens who had made contact with Earth, and the universe was still reminding of the fact that they were paranoid, destructive sons-of-bitches.

He didn't **care** if the Na'vi were only as technologically advanced as the Native Americans had been when the European settlers had come along, this wasn't making him feel better about what they were doing here.

Then the little alien burst out of the dude's chest, spraying fake blood all over the actors and everyone both on the screen and in the make-shift theater screamed.

* * *

-


End file.
